Description

1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311 PSA VG-EX 4."Switch-hitting Mickey is heralded as Joe DiMaggio's
successor," begins the text on the back of the most coveted
post-war trading card in the hobby, prophetic words from a young
copywriter at the young Topps company, best known at the time for
Bazooka bubble gum and the Hopalong Cassidy cowboy trading cards
first issued in 1950. It was Sy Berger, a twenty-eight year old
veteran of the Second World War, who envisioned a Topps set
dedicated to Major League Baseball, designing the format with his
friend Woody Gelman on the kitchen table of his Brooklyn apartment.
Berger would later famously hire a garbage boat to dump leftover
boxes from the 1952 set into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of
New Jersey to free up warehouse space, a bounty that would today be
worth several million dollars.

A watery grave would be the fate for most of the high-number series
from which the fabled Mantle rookie derives, a victim of slow
production and distribution that left this last edition of the set
unable to reach most points of sale prior to the end of the
baseball season. This calculated destruction, paired with the
standard Eisenhower-era themes of bicycle spokes and
spring-cleaning mothers, has left the balance between supply and
demand for the Mick's rookie heavily tipped toward the latter.

Graded PSA VG-EX 4. This is a solid mid-grade specimen, a
level that becomes more appealing every time a top-tier
representation smashes another pricing record. On proud displays
for years, the colors have been affected. Our image is an accurate
reflection of the actual card.